Bob Wallace Appliance Co-Owner Chris Haygood, left, accepts a plaque from John Keys of O'Rourke Sales, the distributor of Speed Queen appliances in the Alabama area on Tuesday. Bob Wallace Appliance was named 2017 Speed Queen Dealer of the Year. / Nick Griffin

CULLMAN - The ribbon was cut, and the doors were officially opened, at Bob Wallace Appliance in Cullman Tuesday, and a crowd made up of the Cullman Area Chamber of Commerce, store employees, family members and the owners was there to celebrate. The store has been on a soft open for a few weeks, but Tuesday marked its official opening.

Dennis Haygood, who owns the company along with his son Chris, has been working on getting a location in Cullman for two years and is excited to start becoming a part of the community.

“The growth and enthusiasm of Cullman is great and it’s a good market, we felt like it was a good opportunity here. We’ve had a lot of people show interest in our coming and everything in this area. We did have a presence in Cullman; we deliver here once a week from Huntsville anyway, so we had some customers here and I felt like it would be a real good market,” said the older Haygood. “I would say we expect a large growth; we’re starting out with a small staff and we’ll adjust as we grow and everything but the interest that’s been shown so far since we’ve had the soft opening is exciting for us. We really haven’t done any advertising or anything yet, so we anticipate a lot of growth here. This is a good location for us and the fact that it’s been an appliance store here for 60 plus years will help us for sure.”

“The reception from the community so far has been great. This’ll be our fifth week open and they’ve been great supporting us, coming in and buying from us and so all we want to do is get an opportunity to be able to offer something and then it’s up to us to keep maintaining it so we just appreciate the business they’ve given us so far. We hope to be here for a long, long time. I don’t know if we’ll be here quite as long as Doug (Boike), at least I won’t,” O’Barr joked. “But we hope to be here for a long time.”

O’Barr has also gotten a chance in the last few weeks to get to know the people and the city of Cullman itself and is excited to be able to provide services within the community.

“As far as Cullman, I love the small-town atmosphere. I love the people; the people here are so great to deal with. I always say you see what you get, and I love that about the people, I don’t have to put on airs or anything like that, the people are great. They support small-town businesses like we are, and our big thing is we service what we sell, and we stand behind what we sell. We want to treat people the way we want to be treated and everything else usually will follow suit.”